Points of Order

3.31 pm

Mr. John Bercow (Buckingham):
On a point of order, Madam Speaker. Have you, with your beady eye, noticed--as I did--that during much of Question Time today, including its start, our faithful friend, the clock, has been running one minute ahead of the time on the Annunciator screen? The effect of that was to lead me and several of my hon. Friends, quite wrongly, to believe that we were starting Question Time a minute late. I am glad that I was corrected by my faithful and hon. Friend the Member for New Forest, East (Dr. Lewis). Can the matter be speedily rectified?

Madam Speaker:
I shall look into the matter; my beady eye had not noticed it.

Mr. Ian Bruce (South Dorset):
On a point of order, Madam Speaker. Some of my constituents took a great deal of time and trouble to put a petition to the House on the banning of hunting with hounds. I am sure that you realise, Madam Speaker, that I am not in favour of that petition, but, like any representative Member, I submitted it on behalf of my constituents. Some weeks later, I was somewhat surprised to receive a note from the Clerk who deals with petitions, stating that the Home Office had been notified of the petition, but had decided not to make any comment. Surely it is strange, when our constituents submit a petition on an issue that concerns them and that is the responsibility of the Government, for the Minister and the Department responsible to say that they have no comment. It is an abuse of our system if we cannot have answers from the Executive on matters of concern to our constituents.

Madam Speaker:
The correct procedure has been followed; not all petitions are responded to. I can assure the hon. Gentleman that the procedure has been carried out. If he does not approve of it, he has an opportunity to try to change it through the Procedure Committee. The procedure that he has reported to me is absolutely correct.

without any parliamentary oversight is bad for democracy. Power corrupts, but patronage corrodes--corrodes democracy, public trust and confidence, and the mechanism of government itself. That is one of the things that the Bill sets out to correct.

Whitehall secrecy, and would also be able to make an independent judgment about whether that secrecy was necessary. By this simple mechanism, Parliament would penetrate the veil of secrecy without jeopardising the real concerns of national security, commercial confidentiality or personal privacy.